Assessing the cumulative environmental effects of marine renewable energy developments: establishing common ground

Assessing and managing the cumulative impacts of human activities on the environment remains a major challenge to sustainable development. This challenge is highlighted by the worldwide expansion of marine renewable energy developments (MREDs) in areas already subject to multiple activities and climate change. Cumulative effects assessments in theory provide decision makers with adequate information about how the environment will respond to the incremental effects of licensed activities and are a legal requirement in many nations. In practise, however, such assessments are beset by uncertainties resulting in substantial delays during the licensing process that reduce MRED investor confidence and limit progress towards meeting climate change targets. In light of these targets and ambitions to manage the marine environment sustainably, reducing the uncertainty surrounding MRED effects and cumulative effects assessment are timely and vital. This review investigates the origins and evolution of cumulative effects assessment to identify why the multitude of approaches and pertinent research have emerged, and discusses key considerations and challenges relevant to assessing the cumulative effects of MREDs and other activities on ecosystems. The review recommends a shift away from the current reliance on disparate environmental impact assessments and limited strategic environmental assessments, and a move towards establishing a common system of coordinated data and research relative to ecologically meaningful areas, focussed on the needs of decision makers tasked with protecting and conserving marine ecosystems and services

Infrastructure Interdependencies: Opportunities from Complexity

Infrastructure networks, such as those for energy, transportation, and telecommunications, perform key functions for society. Although such systems have largely been developed and managed in isolation, infrastructure now functions as a system of systems, exhibiting complex interdependencies that can leave critical functions vulnerable to cascade failure. Consequently, research efforts and management strategies have focused on risks and negative aspects of complexity. This paper explores how interdependencies can be seen positively, representing opportunities to increase organizational resilience and sustainability. A typology is presented for classifying positive interdependencies, drawing on fundamental principles in ecology and validated using case studies. Understanding opportunities that arise from interdependency will enable better understanding and management of infrastructure complexity, which in turn will allow the use of such complexity to the advantage of society. Integrative thinking is necessary not only for mitigating risk but also for identifying innovations to make systems and organizations more sustainable and resilient

Using Geographic Information System to Select Suitable Landfill Sites For Megacities (Case Study of Lagos, Nigeria)

Proper landfill site selection is the fundamental step in sound waste disposal and the protection of the environment, publichealth and quality of life. Proper landfill site selection determines many of the subsequent steps in the landfill process,which, if properly implemented, should ensure against nuisances and adverse long-term effects. For example, a well-selectedlandfill site will generally facilitate an uncomplicated design and provide ample cover material, which would facilitate anenvironmentally and publicly acceptable operation at a reasonable cost. The criteria involved in landfill site selection includeenvironmental, economic and sociopolitical criteria, some of which may conflict. With increased environmental awareness,new legislation and certain other developments over time, the landfill site selection process has become much moresophisticated, as new procedures and tools have been developed (Ball, 2005). Increased environmental awareness anddeepening environmental concerns in recent years have forced attention on the need to move towards a more sustainablesociety. These changes in attitudes in many parts of the world have been supported by changes in laws and policies onenvironment and waste disposal. In this context, the pressures and requirements placed on decision makers dealing with landfill by government and society have increased, as they now have to make decisions taking into considerations publicsatisfaction, environmental safety and economic practicality. This situation has created a need for more consistent andobjective methods for making decisions; improved access to, and better management of environmental information. At theinternational level, criteria of differing degrees of detail exist as guidelines for the optimum siting of landfills (Baban andFlannagan, 1998). The role of Geographic Information Systems in solid waste management is very large as many aspects ofits planning and operations are highly dependent on spatial data. In general, Geographic Information Systems plays a keyrole in maintaining account data to facilitate collection operations; customer service; analyzing optimal locations for transferstations; planning routes for vehicles transporting waste from residential, commercial and industrial customers to transferstations and from transfer stations to landfills; locating new landfills and monitoring the landfill. Geographic informationsystem is a tool that not only reduces time and cost of the site selection, but also provide a digital data bank for futuremonitoring program of the site (Yagoub and Buyong, 2008). This research evaluates existing landfill sites in Lagos,establishes the need for new dumpsites and proposes candidate landfill sites, using Geographic information system as tooland World Bank standard of landfill sitting as criteria.Keywords - Social networks, threats, security, intrusion and attacks

Infrastructure interdependencies : opportunities from complexity

Infrastructure networks, such as those for energy, transportation, and telecommunications, perform key functions for society. Although such systems have largely been developed and managed in isolation, infrastructure now functions as a system of systems, exhibiting complex interdependencies that can leave critical functions vulnerable to cascade failure. Consequently, research efforts and management strategies have focused on risks and negative aspects of complexity. This paper explores how interdependencies can be seen positively, representing opportunities to increase organizational resilience and sustainability. A typology is presented for classifying positive interdependencies, drawing on fundamental principles in ecology and validated using case studies. Understanding opportunities that arise from interdependency will enable better understanding and management of infrastructure complexity, which in turn will allow the use of such complexity to the advantage of society. Integrative thinking is necessary not only for mitigating risk but also for identifying innovations to make systems and organizations more sustainable and resilient

Image Steganography using Hybrid Edge Detector and Ridgelet Transform

Steganography is the art of hiding high sensitive information in digital image, text, video, and audio. In this paper, authors have proposed a frequency domain steganography method operating in the Ridgelet transform. Authors engage the advantage of ridgelet transform, which represents the digital image with straight edges. In the embedding phase, the proposed hybrid edge detector acts as a preprocessing step to obtain the edge image from the cover image, then the edge image is partitioned into several blocks to operate with straight edges and Ridgelet transform is applied to each block. Then, the most significant gradient vectors (or significant edges) are selected to embed the secret data. The proposed method has shown the advantages of imperceptibility of the stego image is increased because the secret data is hidden in the significant gradient vector. Authors employed the hybrid edge detector to obtain the edge image, which increases the embedding capacity. Experimental results demonstrates that peak signal-to-noise (PSNR) ratio of stego image generated by this method versus the cover image is guaranteed to be above 49 dB. PSNR is much higher than that of all data hiding techniques reported in the literature.Defence Science Journal, Vol. 65, No. 3, May 2015, pp.214-219, DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.14429/dsj.65.787

Interleukin-2 druggability is modulated by global conformational transitions controlled by a helical capping switch.

Interleukin-2 (IL-2) is a small α-helical cytokine that regulates immune cell homeostasis through its recruitment to a high-affinity heterotrimeric receptor complex (IL-2Rα/IL-2Rβ/γc). IL-2 has been shown to have therapeutic efficacy for immune diseases by preferentially expanding distinct T cell compartments, and several regulatory T cell (Treg)-biasing anti-IL-2 antibodies have been developed for combination therapies. The conformational plasticity of IL-2 plays an important role in its biological actions by modulating the strength of receptor and drug interactions. Through an NMR analysis of milliseconds-timescale dynamics of free mouse IL-2 (mIL-2), we identify a global transition to a sparse conformation which is regulated by an α-helical capping "switch" at the loop between the A and B helices (AB loop). Binding to either an anti-mouse IL-2 monoclonal antibody (mAb) or a small molecule inhibitor near the loop induces a measurable response at the core of the structure, while locking the switch to a single conformation through a designed point mutation leads to a global quenching of core dynamics accompanied by a pronounced effect in mAb binding. By elucidating key details of the long-range allosteric communication between the receptor binding surfaces and the core of the IL-2 structure, our results offer a direct blueprint for designing precision therapeutics targeting a continuum of conformational states

How the impacts of burst water mains are influenced by soil sand content

Society relies on infrastructure, but as infrastructure systems are often collocated and interdependent, they are vulnerable to cascading failures. This study investigated cross-infrastructure and societal impacts of burst water mains, with the hypothesis that multi-infrastructure failures triggered by burst water mains are more common in sandy soils. When water mains in sandy soils burst, pressurised water can create subsurface voids and abrasive slurries, contributing to further infrastructure failures. Three spatial data investigations, at nested scales, were used to assess the influence that soil sand content has on the frequency and damage caused by burst water mains (1) to roads in the county of Lincolnshire, (2) to other proximal water mains in East Anglia and (3) to other proximal infrastructure and wider society across England and Wales. These investigations used infrastructure network and failure data, media reports and soil maps, and were supported by workshop discussions and structured interviews with infrastructure industry experts. The workshop, interviews and media reports produced a greater depth of information on the infrastructure and societal impacts of cascading failures than the analysis of infrastructure data. Cross-infrastructure impacts were most common on roads, built structures and gas pipes, and they occurred at a higher rate in soils with very high sand contents

Best linear unbiased estimate using buys-ballot procedure when trend-cycle component is linear

The Best linear unbiased estimate (BLUE) of Buys-Ballot estimates when trend-cycle component is linear are discussed in this paper. The estimates are those proposed by Iwueze and Nwogu (2004). Discussed are the Chain Based Estimation (CBE) method and the Fixed Based Estimation (FBE) method. The variates for the CBE method were found to have constant mean and variance but are correlated with only one significant autocorrelation coefficient at lag one. The variates for the FBE method were found to have constant mean, non-constant variance but with constant autocorrelation coefficient at all lags. Because the CBE variates exhibit stationarity, Best Linear unbiased estimators of the slope and intercept were derived. Numerical examples were used to illustrate the methods

trans-Diaqua­bis(2,2′-bipyridine-κ2 N,N′)ruthenium(II) bis­(trifluoro­methane­sulfonate)

The title compound, trans-[Ru(bpy)2(H2O)2](CF3SO3)2 (bpy = 2,2′-bipyridine, C10H8N2), crystallized from the decomposition of an aged aqueous solution of a dimeric complex of cis-Ru(bpy)2 in 0.1 M triflic acid. The RuII ion is located on a crystallographic inversion center and exhibits a distorted octa­hedral coordination with equivalent ligands trans to each other. The Ru—O distance is 2.1053 (16) Å and the Ru—N distances are 2.0727 (17) and 2.0739 (17) Å. The bpy ligands are bent, due to inter-ligand steric inter­actions between H atoms of opposite pyridyl units across the Ru center. The crystal structure exhibits an extensive hydrogen-bonding network involving the water ligands and the trifluoromethane­sulfonate counter-ions within two-dimensional layers, although no close hydrogen-bond inter­actions exist between different layers